Comment by swat535

Comment by swat535 2 days ago

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Setting politics aside for a moment, I find it fascinating that an audit of this scale is taking place within the government. Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?

Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach? Fraud and theft exist at every level of government, but if not through a drastic measure like this, what else can be done? Relying on the status quo, the courts, and current processes hasn’t yielded substantial results—if it had, corruption wouldn’t persist.

Still, I can appreciate the creativity here. Sometimes it takes an outsider to think differently.

That said, I’m not naive enough to assume this is done entirely in good faith. The prevailing opinion—both in this community and the media—seems largely negative; I’ve yet to see a single positive headline. Even so, I find it intriguing.

So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?

russdill 2 days ago

It's already been a thing for quite some time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Inspector_General_(U...

They are independent of the things they review, they find inefficiency, overspending, fraud, and embezzlement. They make their reports public and work with transparency. There are also other similar departments like CIGIE. There have been very substantial results.

What DOGE is doing is not finding inefficiency. They are doing two basic things. 1) Completely eliminating programs they don't think the US should be spending money on. And 2) Reducing headcount. Both of these actions may reduce costs, but may end up costing the US more money in the long term.

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  • misiti3780 2 days ago

    We are 35 trillion dollars in debt - we are broke. We have go cut costs if we want to avoid catastrophe in the medium term.

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    • pjmorris 2 days ago

      Government debt is a result of government spending into the real economy. It is where we get the taxpayer dollars that we spend, some of which go back to the government itself. A government without debt is also an economy without money.

      Governments with central banks can mismanage their currency, but they can't run out of it.

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      • seanw444 2 days ago

        They won't run out of currency, but the people that use it will run out of faith.

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    • dontparticipate 2 days ago

      There's a body of government explicitly built to do exactly that and given exactly that power in the constitution. It's called Congress.

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    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 2 days ago

      If we are broke then why do people buy our debt? It's obviously more complex than you make it sound.

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      • tekknik a day ago

        because for now there’s a reasonable chance it will get paid off. what happens when the house of cards comes down?

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insane_dreamer 2 days ago

Lets assume for a minute that what's going on is a good faith comprehensive audit of these agencies. (It's not, but lets just say it is.)

1) How long do you think it takes to perform a comprehensive audit of an agency in order to accurately determine waste, corruption and fraud. If you've ever audited a large corporation, you know what that takes -- it is not something you whip up in a week or two.

2) Who do you think is qualified to audit government entities? Some "young Turk" DOGE engineers? We're not talking about determining whether computer systems are well architected or should be refactored (though that also takes time to do correctly). We're talking about financial transactions and whether they were legitimate and legal (because if not, that would be "corruption" or "fraud").

Which Fortune500 company would hire a team of (relatively inexperienced) software engineers to audit its books?

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  • cryptonector 2 days ago

    Presumably Elon and hist staff were planning this and -maybe?- training for this for months, perhaps since before the election.

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    • insane_dreamer 2 days ago

      Planning without any access to or knowledge of all these difference agencies and their systems and processes (you do know there are many processes in place to prevent fraud and corruption, and Inspector Generals responsible for auditing)? Almost impossible. Again, these are not software problems.

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arrosenberg 2 days ago

They aren’t auditing or thoroughly reviewing shit. They're stealing the data and then waving their hands about non-existent crimes and nickel and dime levels of misappropriated or weird spending.

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  • ganoushoreilly 2 days ago

    I understand you're frustrated because of who and what. Do you have any direct evidence they are stealing data? I see a lot of these responses that are emotional but at a factual basis it doesn't appear that way. Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.

    I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.

    As for the idea of nickle and dimming, everything adds up and they're no where near done yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we need a lot of it. Nearly every person that has run for president in modern years has stated they would go after excess spending and fraud, yet none follow through. This time someone is. If years of doing nothing gets us further down the debt rabbit hole, what harm is being done?

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    • jhp123 2 days ago

      > Just as raw un restricted read/write access is constantly alleged, but we have in turn found out that isn't the case.

      Marko "normalize Indian hate" Elez did have read/write access, as DOGE lawyers admitted in court after first claiming that he did not[0].

      [0] https://thehill.com/business/5141149-former-doge-employee-ed...

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      • dazilcher 2 days ago

        He was mistakenly given write access by the treasury department employees in charge of managing DOGE permissions. He resigned a day later, likely before he even realized he had write access. In that short window, he accessed the system "exclusively under the supervision of Bureau database administrators", and the initial treasury department investigation did not find any misuse of said write permissions.

        I don't see how this can be blamed on DOGE. If anything it shows that DOGE employees are closely monitored, and their access is minimized and audited.

        https://www.zetter-zeroday.com/court-documents-shed-new-ligh...

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      • ganoushoreilly 2 days ago

        and they immediately course corrected as they should

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    • guax 2 days ago

      Sunlight is publish the findings and take action after.

      They're firing people's, seeing the repercussion and the publishing a list of program names. Not evaluations, not analysis. Nothing substantial, just gotcha out of context strings.

      Do you think the entirety of USAID was "fraud" and waste? What about the US park service?

      I am not American and the only time I saw my country do this kind of action in this manner was during its military government.

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    • arrosenberg 2 days ago

      I have common sense. They put the least serious people possible in charge of it, so of course I'm not going to take it seriously.

      > I really think we're getting to a point where people are too hyper emotional and sensational about most topics which further limits real discussion and response.

      Maybe, but this has nothing to do with emotion. I'm not a moron. An actual audit would be great, but would take more than the 30 days that Trump has been in office. They are lying, so I am left to speculate as to what.

      > This time someone is.

      Do you have any direct evidence they are doing something about it? I see several people supporting these actions that are based on emotion, but at a factual basis, it appears you are just regurgitating party propaganda.

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      • ganoushoreilly 2 days ago

        Who do you propose be put in charge? Why when the Democrats were in power weren't they put in charge before?

        As for an actual audit, those have been done left and right. Audits only validate where the money is going not why.

        Clearly they are doing something, budgeted spend is being cut and most notably if they weren't doing anything we wouldn't be having this discussion. We are also only a handful of weeks into the presidency. They're being very clear about what they are doing. Looking line by line at some of these cuts, I've yet to see anyone here actually debate the validity of all of the spend. Yes good programs will likely be impacted, things will be course corrected and brought back where appropriate.

        It's a painful process no mater who is executing it. The only way to reduce the budgetary spend of the country is to do just that, cut spend. You start small and work your way up.

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aristocracy 2 days ago

DOGE is not necessarily about fraud. Their summary of cancelled projects for USAID for example is often vague. For example, "$14M for "social cohesion" in Mali." As a reader, I have no context for this program, its impact, or who ran it. I don't even have the ability to discern whether other things were lumped in. Can I guess this was aimed at preventing further in-roads of Al Qaeda? Who knows.

An actual cherry-picked example of DOGE's potential fraud finding is at the SSA where Musk showed his query of "DEAD" = "FALSE" (I am paraphrasing a bit) yielded a huge number of folks over ages 115. Context is what is scarce. Are they receiving payments, are there other reasons for why the query returned those results, what other context do I have to interpret these results? Again, I have no idea.

I think the safest way of couching what is going on, is a drastic curtailment of government programs and employees. Equivalents to this? Maybe Gorbachev. I am sure there are other historical parallels, but they are probably apples to peaches comparisons at a certain level.

And to your last question, I am not sure if anyone really knows the problem/s that are being addressed right now other than debt and the capability to pass a tax cut.

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  • mempko a day ago

    I am surprised people are comparing what Trump and Musk are doing now to Putin when in reality it's closer to Gorbachev (as you mentioned) and what the Chicago school did under Yeltsin. For those not aware, they cut government programs, reduced regulation, and privatized many government entities. The result was a catastrophic reduction in GDP and people's wealth. If what is about to come something as devastating, I really hope not. A recent example is what Milei is doing and he had similar results, resulting in a large increase of poverty.

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bink 2 days ago

The Clinton administration conducted a thorough audit, eventually laying off 351k people [1]. But they did so using a six-month review of all agencies performed by experienced federal workers. They ensured there were no national security ramifications and provided severance.

Reagan also had the Grace Commission [2].

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/politics/doge-musk-gore-rego-...

[2] https://www.history.com/news/ronald-reagan-grace-commission-...

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tgv 2 days ago

Idk about the US, but the 'government' fraud that I know of, does not show up in the tax office records or in the foreign aid accounts. The common thing is that civil servants/officials are bribed. At usually on the cheap too, so it'll take a lot of digging to find it, and worse, prove it. But, this kind of corruption is probably even more widespread among companies. If you want to exact justice, that's the place to look.

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  • NoMoreNicksLeft 2 days ago

    >The common thing is that civil servants/officials are bribed. At usually on the cheap too, so it'll take a lot of digging to find it, and worse, prove it.

    While no doubt that brazen bribery occurs at all levels and in a large range of dollar amounts, I do not think this is such a serious problem that it requires the nuclear option he is employing. There is a bribery-adjacent phenomenon that is far worse. I don't know what to call it. Favor-trading? But there is no quid pro quo sufficient to prosecute in most cases, and any attempt to do so would look like (and probably actually become) a witch hunt.

    If a civil servant is just being extra cozy to some private entity knowing (but without anything that would amount to evidence) that they'll be able to sail into some nice lobbyist gig in 3 years, where is the bribe? It was never promised. It's not guaranteed (circumstances could well change before that becomes possible). How much is that shit costing us? And while I'm sure that some would call that bribery too, it's juvenile to do so and counter-productive.

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  • yreg 2 days ago

    In private companies people probably consider the issue to be 'less wrong'.

    It's up to the owners and their management how they run it, right? So it's more about discrimination than government-style corruption.

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root_axis 2 days ago

Before even debating the effectiveness of this audit, we have to address the fundamental problem: Elon Musk has no legal authority to be conducting this in the first place. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is not a real government agency and Musk has not been confirmed by the Senate or given formal oversight. It's illegal and unconstitutional.

Beyond that, yes, large-scale government audits have been done before. In fact, we already have institutions designed to do exactly that. The GAO, the Office of the Inspector General, and even bipartisan commissions have uncovered fraud and inefficiencies without letting an extremely partisan private individual with massive conflicts of interest connected to his businesses arbitrarily rip apart government agencies.

Your claim that the continued existence of fraud means the system does not work is also specious, it's obviously not possible to eliminate all fraud, statements like that make me doubt that your comment is made in good faith.

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  • ganoushoreilly 2 days ago

    [flagged]

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    • root_axis 2 days ago

      As tends to be the case, the ruling is nuanced.

      https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-scores-win-suit-chall...

      FTA: In her decision, Chutkan wrote that the states "legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight." But the judge said the states had not shown why they were entitled to an immediate restraining order.

      That doesn't mean Elon was exonerated, it just means that an immediate restraining order won't be issued.

      > So in good faith, i'd ask you, what is your solution to solve the fraud issue?

      The question cannot be asked in good faith because it frames the discussion in a manner that suggests the concern here is one of fraud, however what we've witnessed by DOGE instead is arbitrary and partisan firings, as well as brazen falsehoods and mischaracterizations about the nature of what is being cut and the total numbers of what is being saved (by several orders of magnitude in some cases).

      I don't feel the need to discuss an earnest plan about cutting fraud and waste because that is not what is on the table right now with DOGE. Further, I don't see any evidence presented to explain why the GAO and other bipartisan efforts to curtail fraud are regarded as ineffective. Simply stating "fraud still exists" is not an honest rebuttal, since fraud will always exist.

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      • ganoushoreilly 2 days ago

        Ok so ignore fraud, they're finding waste that doesn't align with the Presidents vision for America. It's as simple as that. The president isn't in alignment with Gender Ideology or "wokeness" as is often put. The large majority of these programs support those ideas. That's his right through EO and his cabinet picks to change. HHS has now defined what a woman is, anything counter to that is counter to their opinion and is going to be removed. You don't have to agree, or like it, but it is what it is.

        There is excess spending on what the admin sees as bullshit, they're going to remove it. Just as Biden pushed to forgive student loans and it played out in the courts, this will play out as well, though it seems to not be in favor of the "losing parties".

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palata 2 days ago

> if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?

I would start by not firing people doing jobs I don't understand. They do that a lot, even for very, very important jobs.

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scottLobster 2 days ago

This isn't an audit, it's a blindfolded hatchet job. They've already been caught either deliberately or accidentally misinterpreting data, to the tune of they called an 8 million dollar contract an 8 billion dollar contract, among many other glaring discrepancies. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/19/doge...

So if I was in charge, I would start by making sure I did the math right and didn't blindly trust my database scraping scripts as they appear to be doing (and that's the most generous interpretation). I would also make sure that before recommending that I fire any group, I at least have a high level understanding of what that groups works on. So I don't, say, fire the people who oversee the nuclear arsenal, or a group of researchers working on the current bird flu outbreak (both of these have been done). Rehiring takes money and time because upon firing their contact information is apparently deleted, and you aren't going to get a 100% return rate.

I also have some experience working with giant bloated blobs of legacy code managing critical systems, where many variables are arcane acronyms because they were written in a time where compilers had character limits. Moving fast and breaking things in that environment is just a good way to break a lot of things and not even understand how you did it. Which is fine if it's twitter, and a little more important when you're managing aircraft, nuclear weapons, disease outbreaks, entitlement payments that people depend on, etc.

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bedane 2 days ago

conveniently sweeping aside the fact that those who depend the most on the 'inefficient' programs/agencies that are being 'optimized' are the poorest and weakest members of society. those who can afford private everything will be fine.

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Vilian 2 days ago

>Has there ever been a historical precedent where an external agency thoroughly reviewed all departments, published its findings for the public, and then based decisions on that analysis?

They are 't reviewing and publishing shit, it yes there is historical moments when those types of things happened, usually after coup, dictatorship, or just any authoritarian government everyday dismantling everything, that's why everyone looking outside of USA with a bit of history knowledge see as a very bad precedent

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wpm 2 days ago

>Is it really possible to root out governmental fraud using this approach?

It's possible it will, but not without a lot of false positives and innocent bystanders.

At the scale of the federal government, there are plenty of things that appear to be fraud but actually have a reasonable justification.

In the Dunning-Kruger world we unfortunately seem to live in now, I don't think having every single yokel personally analyzing every line item on a budget as large as the federal government's, especially when those yokels don't really understand any of it, is the best way to go about this.

This admin isn't trustworthy either. They'll sit here an cry about 0.01% of the federal budget being "wasted" on a bunch of National Park probies, and meanwhile the self-appointed king is out golfing on the taxpayer dime.

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  • moogly 2 days ago

    "Governmental fraud." This is like when people are being (made) upset about vanishingly small benefits fraud when wage theft and tax evasion are several magnitudes of order worse.

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dennis_jeeves2 a day ago

>So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?

I would not do it differently. Well, probably it's going to be worse (but most measures). DM and EM are being too nice in my opinion.

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Rapzid 2 days ago

Instead of firing all the auditors(Inspectors General) I'd bring them in and get their input on how to tackle something of this magnitude. Then see about getting them the resources necessary as I'm assuming they would need to staff up massively with experienced auditors(aka not DOGE) and other resources.

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callc 2 days ago

> So here’s my question: if you were in charge of addressing this problem, how would you tackle it differently?

For one, with responsibility and care for the public. Not with reckless abandon. Not with malice. Not with a child-like perversion towards breaking things because it’s fun.

Politics aside, this has been an extremely unsettling disruption in the faith we have in our institutions. Trust and stability are the backbones to societal and economic growth. The unseen costs Trump/Musk/doge have wrought are massive, are spread equally among all people (globally, in US, minus the wealthy class), and is hard to see on a spreadsheet

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yreg 2 days ago

I think it's certain that there will be positive and negative consequences and both of those will be on a large scale. I too am curious about the positives.

I think the negatives could have been easily minimized to more-reasonable-level without affecting the positive ones, if it wasn't headed by hothead Elon.

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boppo1 2 days ago

>published its findings for the public

Is doge actually doing this in a meaningful way? What is the website? Thus far I'm only aware of them celebrating partisan victories like chopping funding for trans theater etc.

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insane_dreamer 2 days ago

It's shocking to me how many people think that auditing government agencies is some new thing being implemented by Trump/Musk.

These agencies all have Inspector Generals, who are outside of the agency and responsible for auditing their particular agency. And they do, there are reports on this sort of thing.

Most of the IGs, if not all, were fired by Trump first thing.

> corruption wouldn’t persist

We still haven't seen any evidence of corruption, by the way. Yeah, I'm sure there's some gov employees here and there doing fraudulent stuff, skimming off the top or getting gov contracts to their buddies. But there has been zero evidence of any widespread or systemic corruption in a single agency. Nothing.

The agency that did get axed the most -- USAID -- was because of "woke ideology" that they were supposedly pushing (though there wasn't any evidence of that being widespread either), not corruption/fraud (breaking the law).

It's like the WMD excuse to invade Iraq.

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